


what once were stars are now constellations

by nicodemons



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Castiel/Dean Winchester One Shot, Constellations, Dean Winchester at the Beach, Destiel - Freeform, Established Castiel/Dean Winchester, Human Castiel (Supernatural), M/M, Post-Canon, Stars, because I'm a sucker for cliches when they're gay, because goddammit he DESERVES IT, cas and dean contemplate the stars, giant flaming balls of gas in the sky, google how do I tag, philosophical conversation, post-secret-good-finale-that-lives-in-my-head, so I guess that makes it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-12
Updated: 2021-02-12
Packaged: 2021-03-18 11:35:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29367870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nicodemons/pseuds/nicodemons
Summary: "He’s spent so much of the last twelve years in cities and windowless rooms that his human brain doesn’t immediately recall the last time he saw the stars from this side of the heavens. He knows, though, that he didn’t see it like this— complete, all the pieces clicking together, twinkling lights aligning themselves into constellations."Newly-human Castiel and Dean talk about giant flaming balls of gas in the sky and the human capacity for love, on the beach, in the middle of the night.
Relationships: Castiel & Dean Winchester, Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 8
Kudos: 34





	what once were stars are now constellations

**Author's Note:**

  * For [legendtripper](https://archiveofourown.org/users/legendtripper/gifts), [hals_ace](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hals_ace/gifts).



> I was thinking about Destiel and stars and Dean's freckles and constellations and the way Supernatural fans shaped the show and how Cas would feel about being human again and— and— then this happened. 
> 
> It's sappy (so, pretty on-brand), enjoy.

The night is dark but for one lancing ray of bright silvery light beaming through the window, reflected from the sun off the pure white surface of the moon and directly in Castiel’s eyes in one of those miraculous alignments of cosmic geometry.

It pulls him out of an ocean of nothing, darkness, eternity; false death. He gasps for air, turns, presses himself into the familiar warmth of the shape next to him in the bed. Lips on skin on soul the color of nautical twilight. Tangled legs. Dark hair ruffled with dreams. Pillows holding the scent of lavender soap and sea salt.

The sky, in the window, and the gentle rise and fall of waves on a shore behind a door and a room and a door.

He slips out of bed, maybe not as graceful as he once was but no less careful not to disturb the tenuous and precious peace and steps barefoot over weathered wood and a thin woven carpet the colors of the dawn. The door creaks. A little sign hung by a nail on its front side bumps gently with its open and close.

Grass fades into selenic sand fades into sea fades into sky. And in the sky, stars, stretching into eternity, dappling the crests of waves. One continuous celestial painting, him and the sand between his toes and the oceanic breeze in his hair and the sleeping borrowed house behind him and the watching ether.

He’s spent so much of the last twelve years in cities and windowless rooms that his human brain doesn’t immediately recall the last time he saw the stars from this side of the heavens. He knows, though, that he didn’t see it like this— complete, all the pieces clicking together, twinkling lights aligning themselves into constellations.

Looking through the eyes of an angel is like looking at that Seurat painting with the long French name he saw once in a museum in Chicago, and seeing every individual dot, without realizing the meaning of the painting as a whole—not seeing the park, or the ladies in too many layers of fabric in the sun that you just sweat looking at, or the kids, or the anatomically incorrect cat in the foreground. Just dots. Molecules. Pieces of a whole; a whole in pieces.

But now, human, his mind doesn’t perceive irrelevant minutiae, fill up with noise before the symphony comes together. And so, in his relative blindness, it’s more beautiful than it’s ever been.

He does not see God in any of it; he understands now that art is not defined solely by its creator. 

“Wishing you were back up there?” He hadn’t heard Dean’s approach. He’s standing just to Cas’s right now, a little uneasy maybe, still learning how to uncoil himself after lifetimes of adapting to ever-present danger, a constant need to spring.

“No. Never.”

Dean crosses his arms, glances at him sidelong. He looks so much healthier these days, Cas notices. He’s been eating a little better, drinking a little less.

“Really? Even on a night like this?”

“ _Especially_ on a night like this.” His fingers brush Dean’s elbow. As if in answer, Dean uncrosses his arms to wrap one around him and pull him closer. Because they _do_ that now. Just touch. And when they do, the world doesn’t shift again to wrench them apart. 

“Do you know what stars are, Dean?”

“If you say some shit like ‘the dead watching over us,’ you got another thing coming.”

“ _No_. They’re giant flaming balls of gas.”

“So, like Sam.” Dean flashes one of his patented shit-eating kid grins.

“ _Dean._ ”

“Sorry.” He tries to school his expression. Cas feels himself mirroring the upward quirk of his lips.

“What I’m _trying_ to say is… well, they’re _not_ souls. They didn’t really mean anything until humans looked upon them and saw stories within them. Constellations… weren’t really there until humans put them there. I couldn’t see them. Before.”

“But the stars _don’t_ mean anything.”

“But doesn’t it make life that much better to believe that they do?”

Dean takes in a breath.

“Yeah, I guess it does,” he says, after a moment. 

“I think it’s an amazing thing about humanity. Your— _our_ — capacity to love anything. Horror movies. Spiky plants. Giant flaming balls of gas trillions of miles away. Each other.”

“Huh. I never really thought about it that way.”

“Why would you? You’ve never known anything else.”

“Well, I was a demon for a little while. But that… mostly just made me tired. At this point, I—” Dean frowns. “I barely remember it, actually.”

“Yes I… suppose I’m adjusting to millions more years of not being human.”

Dean wrinkles his nose. “That’s… weird. I didn’t think I had to tell you not to talk about that.”

“This vessel, however, has aged very slowly over the course of the past twelve years, so physically I’m only the equivalent of about forty–”

“You’re making it weirder, shut up.”

Cas grins. He tugs Dean down with him as he sits down in the sand. 

His left hand digs into the beach. It’s the soft kind of sand that feels nice running between his fingers.

Dean mumbles something about sand in his pants.

“If I’d been given a choice,” Cas says, resting his head on Dean’s shoulder and turning his eyes back up to the sky, “I’d have chosen this again. I’d have chosen... being able to appreciate… all of this.” He sweeps his hand over the landscape, the ocean, the sky. “I’d choose this… feeling that I get, being able to watch Jack and Claire grow into their own, being friends with Sam and Eileen and Jody and Donna and all the others, and… being with you.” He doesn’t say he suspects this is why he’d started to lose his grace in the first place, that all the things he’d started to feel over the course of however many years pushed out his grace like his body just couldn’t contain them both at once.

It’s a working theory. A conversation for another time, maybe.

“You say the cheesiest shit sometimes, Cas, you know that? What is this, a Netflix romance for teenage girls?” Dean says, but he’s smiling, and Cas can practically feel him holding back something probably even cheesier.

“I seem to recall that you really liked—” Dean cuts his sentence short with a kiss.

“Shh. The universe doesn’t need to know.” He’s got one hand on the back of Cas’s neck, fingers in his hair, holding them together, foreheads touching. 

His gaze intensifies, then. “I’m glad you’re… I’m glad you’re okay with this. You know I don’t care whether you’re human or angel or whatever, as long as you’re _here._ My life is better with you in it.”

“Dean Winchester, you say the cheesiest shit.”

“Asshole.” Then, “I love you.”

“I love you too, Dean.” _I love you I love you I love you I love you—_ it swells up in his chest, a kind of grace of its own. “I love loving you.” 

When they come up for air Cas can still make out the smattering of freckles dusting Dean’s cheekbones in hardly more than moonlight.

Constellations. 

**Author's Note:**

> You've probably seen the Seurat painting but [here it is](https://www.artic.edu/artworks/27992/a-sunday-on-la-grande-jatte-1884) if you're not familiar with it
> 
> Thanks to you all for reading, I hope you enjoyed! If you'd like to try to guess which movie Cas was going to name, I'd love to hear it ;)
> 
> Thanks to legendtripper as always for betaing this fic (and also being the voice in my head preventing me from repeating words)! Check out their work I'm begging you, they brilliant.
> 
> You can find me elsewhere on the internet: [clowning on tumblr](https://dolphinsarefratboys.tumblr.com) or trying to restrain myself from clowning on [the bird app](https://twitter.com/nicodemons_?s=21)
> 
> Longer finale fix-it coming later... mayhaps...? I have a lot of Thoughts.
> 
> This fic is also [on tumblr](https://dolphinsarefratboys.tumblr.com/post/642880345263489024/what-once-were-stars)!
> 
> -Nico


End file.
